Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

Indigenous communities continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia. Even if leaders are not blatantly political in their work, they are still targeted.

William Ferney Pazú Toconás, age 23, was a renowned Indigenous cultural leader from Vitoyó village in the Jambaló Reservation in the north of Cauca Department. A member of the musical group Los Tiraflechas, he was passionate about playing flute and drum music and was respected for his work teaching traditional Indigenous music and instruments to children and young adults.

The morning after a cultural celebration, his body was found on the banks of a river in the center of the reservation. He became the 21st social leader killed in Cauca Department this year, and the 85th overall in Colombia.

William Ferney Pazú Toconás, ¡presente!

The National Civil Police (PNC) and members of the Armed Forces are harassing and scaring those who publicly call for the release of jailed environmental defenders José Ángel Pérez and Alejandro Henríquez, who were arrested in May after participating in a vigil protesting the eviction of 300 families from the El Bosque agricultural cooperative.  Security forces visit people’s homes, follow them in vehicles, take photographs, and interrogate people. One of the questions they ask is whether these spokespersons for these organizations motivate them to protest against the government. "What's being set up is a witch hunt," said Carlos Flores, spokesperson for the Water Forum, as he denounced the government-led effort to dismantle civil society organizations and criminalize peaceful protest.

In July, Amnesty International declared some of these falsely criminalized environmental and human rights defenders as prisoners of conscience, including José Ángel Pérez, Alejandro Henríquez, and prominent human rights and anti-corruption attorney for the human rights organization Cristosal, Ruth López.

We call on the government of El Salvador to end the systematic persecution and incarceration of advocates for the environment, civil and human rights.

Last month, the Peace Commission of the Evangelical [Protestant] Council of Colombia (CEDECOL) issued a statement condemning the massacre of eight Christian church leaders in a rural area of Calamar municipality, Guaviare Department.

Upon receiving personal summons from an illegally armed group (understood to be a dissident faction of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC), the eight appeared for their respective meetings over a two-day period (April 4-5), from which they never returned. Unrelenting, international organizations and members of the public security forces discovered the location of the mass grave in a rural area of the same municipality; this was later confirmed by the Office of the Attorney General Office on July 1. 

We are urging the Colombian government to take the following actions:

(1) conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the killing of these eight church leaders, publish the results, and bring to justice those materially and intellectually responsible

(2) consult with religious leaders who conduct pastoral work in regions occupied by illegally armed groups to devise protection mechanisms, in strict accordance with their wishes

(3) accelerate efforts to bring justice and closure to the fate of so many others who have been disappeared or lost their lives at the hands of illegally armed groups

Maryuri Hernández, Jesús Valero, James Caicedo, Óscar García, Nixón Peñaloza, Maribel Silva, Isaid Gómez, and Carlos Valero: ¡presente!

At the public hearing held during the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ (IACHR) 193rd Period of Sessions (July 14-25, 2025), “civil society organizations stated that the Salvadoran criminal justice system is being misused, compounding concerns around the erosion of independence of the judiciary and the prosecution service and the adoption of regressive legal reforms since 2021. They also warned that the criminalization of human rights defenders and journalists—alongside increased harassment, intimidation, and violence against them, and the adoption of the Foreign Agents Law—has had a chilling effect on their work, restricted civic space, and forced dozens of people into exile while triggering the closure of several civil society organizations.”’

In this RRN letter to authorities in El Salvador, we denounced the criminalization of human rights lawyers Rudy Joya and Ivania Cruz; both are spokespersons for UNIDEHC (Human and Community Rights Defense Unit). They have suffered retaliation for filing multiple legal actions against members of the Bukele Administration for human rights abuses and corruption. Under the Organized Crime Court, which is typically reserved for violent gang members, the human rights lawyers were falsely charged with “illicit groupings.”  Arrest warrants were issued for them after their preliminary hearing.

On August 15, the IACHR repeated its recommendation to end the State of Emergency. We echo the recommendation of the international body to instead develop a “comprehensive, multi-sectoral public security policy that addresses the causes and consequences of crime, based on evidence and with a human rights perspective.” We also urge the immediate removal of the fraudulent charges against Rudy Joya and Ivania Cruz.

The Garífuna people, desendants of Indigenous peoples from the Caribbean and formerly enslaved Africans, have lived on the Atlantic coast since 1797. Despite having collective land title to many of their communities on the  northern coast, local mayors and other authorities have illegally sold and issued building permits to developers looking to get rich with tourist golf resorts, ports for cruise ships, and luxury retirement villages. The national government has mostly turned a blind eye, despite having been condemned three times by the Inter-American Court of Human rights for violating the Garífuna people’s right to collective land ownership in three separate communities.

One of the most notorious foreign investors is Randy Jorgensen of Canada. Late last year, more than 3,500 archaeological artifacts belonging to several Indigenous and pre-Columbian cultures—including sacred items likely taken from burial sites—were found in Jorgensen’s former property near Trujillo, Colón Department. Although the Attorney General did seize 233 of Jorgensen’s ill-gotten properties, Jorgensen has not been arrested or charged in relation to the property seizures. Furthermore, the Attorney General has taken to public action to investigate the illegal collection of cultural artifacts.

We echo the demands of OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) and call on authorities to:

(1) arrest Randy Jorgensen and conduct a full criminal investigation into the charges of land usurpation, money laundering, and illegal possession and trafficking of cultural artifacts

(2) protect the recovered cultural artifacts, with a commitment to returning them to the rightful Indigenous communities.

(3) fully enforce land titling decisions in favor of the Garífuna and hold accountable public officials who failed to protect Indigenous rights.

The families of the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Enterprise in the community of Panamá, Colón Department—like too many farming families in the Bajo Aguán Valley—have experienced violence for many years, much of it the result of violent conflicts between campesinos and the palm oil giant Dinant Corporation. The cooperative farm is named for Gregorio Chávez, who was brutally murdered (presumably by private security guards of Dinant) while going about his daily farming activities in July 2012.

More recently, Josué Esaú Aguilar Cárcamo, the 22-year-old son of Guadalupe Cárcamo, one of the leaders of the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Cooperative, was assassinated on May 31, at about 6:30pm, riddled with bullets as he rode his motorcycle in the nearby community of Rigores. That followed the killing of two other members of Gregorio Chávez in late January of this year. The campesino coalition Agrarian Platform (Plataforma Agraria) has accused Dinant of bankrolling Los Cachos, a criminal organization often described as a “death squad,” to provide private security for Dinant. 

We are urging that the government of Honduras:

(1) conduct a thorough and transparent investigation to discover the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of Josué Esaú Aguilar Cárcamo, publish the results, and bring them to justice

(2) implement the agreement signed on April 23 with the United Nations, which awarded Honduras $2 million dollars toward “preventing and managing social conflict in Bajo Aguán through the protection of human rights and access to justice”

(3) fully install and activate the Bajo Aguán Truth Commission (also known as the “Tripartite Commission”) to investigate the causes of and those responsible for unpunished violence

(4) install a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission and guarantee its independence

El Tumbador, a farm in the campesino community of Guadalupe Carney, Trujillo, Colón Department, has long been a central area of dispute between campesinos and the palm oil giant Dinant corporation; the farming families have been victims of violence for many years. Douglas Alexander Pereira was likely targeted for his leadership and security role, placing him in direct opposition to the control over the farm land in the Bajo Aguán Valley that Dinant hopes to maintain.  He was shot and killed on May 13 by two armed men while carrying out his security duties for the cooperative’s small convenience store. Community members persist in their demands for justice and accountability in their friend’s assassination.

We are urging that authorities in the Honduran government: 

(1) conduct a thorough and transparent investigation to discover the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of Douglas Alexander Pereira, publish the results, and bring them to justice

(2) work with campesino organizations in the Bajo Aguán Valley to devise and implement a protection mechanism for the campesino families and leaders who face extreme violence for defending land promised to them under the Agrarian Reform 

(3) conduct a complete and unbiased investigation into the criminal ties between agroindustrial companies (like Dinant) and illegally armed groups